Aashna Uppal

I am thrilled to be here as part of the HDRUK-Turing-Wellcome PhD Programme in Health Data Science. Before coming to the University of Oxford, I worked as an epidemiologist at the Public Health Agency of Canada, on a COVID-19 surveillance and epidemiology team. My academic background is in biology and mathematics (undergraduate) and public health (graduate) – I’ve completed both my BSc and MScPH at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. During that time, I had the opportunity to work with a research team focused on answering a variety of questions related to tuberculosis in the Canadian North. We used methods like dynamic infectious disease modelling and cost-effectiveness analysis. Despite living in Montreal for six years, my French is incredibly mediocre, but I consider myself to be fluent in “franglais”! When I’m not at the Big Data Institute (or, equivalently, huffing and puffing while cycling up Headington Hill), I enjoy baking and watching Bollywood movies.